Ep #227: How to Change Radically

Hi docs, welcome to The EntreMD Podcast, where it’s all about helping amazing physicians just like you embrace entrepreneurship so you can have the freedom to live life and practice medicine on your terms. I’m your host, Dr. Una.

Well hello, hello. Welcome back to the podcast. Today we are going to be talking about something that is really, really important, and that is how to change radically. Think of it in terms of exponential change and not addition. How do I change?

And I think this is really important for a number of reasons. I mean we have all of these goals that we want to accomplish and all of that, but beyond that we are in medicine, and this is a defining moment or a Kairos moment, if you would, for doctors in healthcare. And it is so important that there are examples of what is possible.

It is so critical that we have examples. Why? When we have examples everybody’s idea of what is possible gets elevated. And that’s what we need. You’ve heard me tell my story many times of how when I started off in business I was like, “How do we do these things? What is possible? Can I even do this?” I’m thinking it’s not possible for me to create a thriving practice and all of that stuff.

What did I need? Examples. What if I had 20 doctors in my world who were killing it as physician entrepreneurs? Think of how much easier my journey would have been because I’m like, “No, this is how we roll, this is what we do.” Right?

And so if you’re listening to this it’s going to be great to hear, but I also want you to hear it from the standpoint of I want to change radically because it’s great for me as an individual, it’s great for my business, because remember once you change everything changes. So it’s great for my business, my business thrives.

Then think about the time and financial freedom it can create. I have the time for the things that matter, I have the finances to fund my life and to sponsor whatever it is that I really want to do with my life. Right? It makes all these things possible.

But beyond that in a time where doctors do not have autonomy, where doctors are not the leaders in healthcare, where a lot of doctors are saying do not go into medicine, it’s a disaster. And doctors do not have financial freedom you are an example of what is possible. You are a billboard telling them, “Listen, this is what your life could look like.” And we need that now.

So I want you to listen to this episode from that standpoint. We need you to arise now. All right, so before we get into the episode I do want to take a moment and I want to read a review of the EntreMD Method book, which is number 1 Amazon best seller. Many, many physicians have said every physician should read this, every resident should read this, every doctor who is interested in business should read this and all of that.

And this doctor is Dr. Estelle Jean. And this doctor gives us five lovely stars, you guys know how much I love five stars, and says, “Great guide for entrepreneurs. Felt so inspired after reading this book to make the necessary mindset shifts. Dr. Una also gave practical advice on how to find your ideal clients and be a successful entrepreneur. I highly recommend this book.”

All right, thank you, Dr. Jean. That was so amazing. Thank you for spreading the word, it really does help us get the word out there and let doctors know. I call this a $16 MBA. If you have not grabbed a copy yet, you can go do that, entremd.com/book. And if you’ve bought a copy then I will invite you to do what I’m doing, which is giving away as many copies as I can.

And I think my last count I was at 60 copies. And I’ve given it to the residents at the program where I graduated from and all of that. So if you want to do bulk copies, you want to reach out to us as well and so we can help you with that so you can be part of the cavalry, right? Because we are the cavalry, the cavalry is not coming.

All right, so let’s talk about how to change radically. And I want to talk about this in the concept of something that many physicians would do, maybe you’re doing it actually right now. And that is in the context of a meeting or in the context of a program. Okay, so let’s say you are going to be attending a conference.

Like at the time of this recording we are in the heat of organizing EntreMD Live, which is the annual event for EntreMD, the number one conference for physicians who want to build six and seven figure businesses. It’s going to be off the chain, right? We’re working on the contents, getting people in and all of that kind of stuff.

And for me, I tend to think very strategically, and I help people around me to think strategically. Like if I’m going to spend six hours at an event, I am going to get a return on my investment. That’s the way I think about events, I’m going to get a wild return on my investment. So that’s one and physicians go for conferences and retreats and all of that all the time.

The other thing is doctors are in programs. And so I could use the EntreMD Business School as an example, and there are doctors in there. So this is our year long program for doctors who want to build successful businesses. We have people in there from startup to over 5 million in revenue. We have many people who crossed their first seven figures while in the school and all of that, right? So, amazing.

Now, you also want to be in a program and get your return on investment, okay? Because a meeting or a program has the capacity to really radically change your life. But there’s some things that make that possible and I want to talk about those today.

Talk about programs, you’ve heard me talk many times about the first program that I did, and I paid 43 grand for. And the thing about that program is my husband still talks about it, saying it’s the best $43,000 we’ve spent. Why? Radical change. Radical change.

So what do you do? So you have a huge return on investment on the events you attend. I mean, think about it, especially if it’s not virtual, right? You paid for your flight, you took time off work, you are off your business and all of that, you paid for the hotel, you paid for your meals, you paid for the conference, you’re away from your family. Like if you’re going to do all of that, you should have something to show for it. There should be something you know, that makes it so worth it. So worth it.

Not just that, oh, I’ll meet people and I’ll have fun. I’ll get a break. No, like so worth it. Same for a program. I happily invest in programs. I have ever since I did my first one because I always get a return on my investment, okay?

All right, so the overarching principle, you know, the overarching way we would think about this is you as a seed in the soil. So hear me, okay? So seed in the soil. Now, when you think about a seed that’s planted, it is put in an environment, right? And if it’s good soil, it’s an environment where there is water which the seed needs, there are minerals which the seed needs, and all of that, right? The nutrition that the seeds need, it’s all in there, right?

But those things, the seed pulls them, right? the seed pulls it. It pulls the water, pulls all of that stuff into itself, right? And so when we show up at events, when we show up in programs, we go there like the seed to pull in our direction what we need.

And the reason why I like to adopt this mindset is it puts me in a state where it’s active, right? It’s active, not passive. I’m not just there. Like I’m at this event, I dare you to change my life. Or I’m in this program, I dare you to make my business better.

No, you are there, and you go in there like, I am here to get everything I need to take my life and my business where it needs to be, which is very different. So it’s active, not passive and it puts you in charge of your own transformation, right? You have full autonomy here.

It puts you in charge of your own transformation, as opposed to delegating your transformation, right? So now you’re in control. Now you get what you need, right? Now you’re the boss. Now you can determine this is the return on investment I want and I’m going to get it.

You might say but it’s also dependent on the program, which it probably is to an extent. But let me tell you something, I have even signed up for programs, like there was a program I signed up for that I should not have. It was not congruent.

I don’t know, I missed something when they were explaining it all. I still got a return on my investment because of what I’m about to tell you. I think it was $10,000 or something for the program. I still got my return on investment, even though it was the “wrong” program. So I want you to pay attention to this. Okay?

All right, so what’s the first thing that I need to do? Number one is I need to pay attention to the content. Okay? I need to pay attention to the content. And a lot of times this is the part people will do, okay? But I pay attention to it. What is the roadmap that they use? What is the success path? What are the core pillars of the event, of the program? What are they teaching? I’m learning, I am open to learn.

One of the things that cripples learning is deciding I know this, I know all about this. And I see this all the time. Maybe somebody is working on building a team and you’re trying to talk to them about how to conduct an interview, so you put the right people on the bus, right? You hire the right people. Oh, I know about that interviewing stuff. But you don’t, because it’s not working for you, right?

So how about have an open mind? How about you may hear one idea, it doesn’t take more than one idea, one idea that changes everything, right? One idea. And so you approach the contents with an open mind.

It doesn’t mean you’re going to throw away all your philosophies and all that, but you stay curious. Like, huh, I had never thought about it that way. Stay curious and then you can make your own judgments and all of that. But approach the content with an open mind. So that’s the first thing, pay attention to the content.

The second thing is pay attention to the organization. So it could be the organization or the person in charge, you know, that whole thing, right? Pay attention to them. If I go for any event I am paying attention to how is the person leading the event showing up? How is the person leading the event leveraging their team? What are the wow factors that they put into their event?

When challenges show up, because they always will, a microphone won’t work, or somebody will have some outburst or something, how do they handle it? There are things you learn that are taught, which is your content. There are other things that are learned that are caught just based on observation.

And if you miss that, that’s a huge chunk because teaching is one thing, right? Teaching is ideal scenarios, all of that kind of stuff, controlled. But when you’re watching somebody act it out, that’s not controlled, there’s so many valuable lessons to learn there. So you pay attention.

If you were at that particular conference or you were in that program a while ago, right, and you’re seeing them do something similar again, notice the growth. And go like, wait a minute, last year, they had 100 people in here and this year they have 200 people, that’s amazing. That means the things they are doing, it’s working, right?

Or you can say, you know, this program was structured one way and they’ve restructured and it’s so much better. Pay attention to those things because there’s so much to learn.

You may say I’m not at a stage where I need that, but that’s the whole idea. You are prepared before it’s time, right? Because when it’s time, when the opportunity shows up it’s too late to prepare, right? So pay attention.

When they do their talks there are some people who will do talks with slides, there are some people who do, you know, without slides. You know what I mean? Like how are they navigating that? So what do they do with their notes? Are they doing all off of memory? How do they relate with the audience? Look at all of that. Look at how they’re growing, look at how they’re structuring things, okay?

There are things I learned from retreats five years ago. I attended a retreat five years ago and there are things I noticed, I was like, “Oh man, look at that.” It was such a wow factor. And then I started tracing, I’m like this must be the way they did it and all of that. Five years later I had a retreat and then I was like, “Oh, let me do something like that.” And it was amazing. But I learned it five years before, right?

So pay attention. You may use it, you may not use it, you may adopt it in a different way, but learn. Learn from the organizers. Learn from the organizers. If you have access to ask questions, so let’s say you’re in a program, like for instance in the EntreMD Business School one of the things I do, which is what I do in EntreMD anyway is that I don’t come out to say all these theories and stuff like that.

I study businesses and I use my business as the ultimate guinea pig, right? My businesses are the ultimate guinea pigs and I practice them and try them. And I push to get big results. And I come back and say, “Guys, look. That thing works. Look what I did. Look at the results.” I take them behind the scenes, right?

When you get the ability to see that, so when I do EntreMD Live, I come back, I’m like, “Okay, this is how many people registered, this is what we did to get them registered, this is how we framed the talk, this is how we did this.” And they have opportunities to ask questions and all of that stuff.

When you are in a program, or if you’re in an event and you have the opportunity to ask questions, that is gold. Like literal gold, take full advantage of it. Full, right? Learn what they’re doing. It’s a shortcut beyond, because listen they tried many things that didn’t work. And they can teach you all the things that didn’t work and the things that did work. And you have this whole buffet, it is so amazing.

And even in the context of watching them, let’s say it’s an event, let’s say it’s even a program you can follow them and watch like how did they promote that? How did they tell people about that? What was their strategy?

So I was at an event Ed Mylett did, you guys know I’m an Ed Mylett fan. If you don’t follow his show you should, The Ed Mylett Show, it’s really good. And so he had an event called the Powerful More and at that event he put 80,000 people in it. 80,000. Now the most I’ve put in an EntreMD event is 533. He put 80,000 in it.

And so I’m just looking, I’m like, how did he promote it? So I go behind the scenes, I go to his Instagram page, re-look at his emails, all that stuff. And I started decoding it. I was like, “Oh, he did that, he did that, he did that.” Why am I doing that? I’m learning. It’s not just about the event, right? It’s like school, I can turn it into a school.

So that’s number two. Number three. Number three is the networking, okay? When you go to an event, I almost want to say that one of the most important things you do, more important than the learning, watching, you know, the people. Now, all of these are important. So I’m not trying to say they’re not, please hear me, okay?

But the networking is the part that, especially if you’re an introvert you can skip out on that and say it’s okay, it is a huge part of the ROI because it takes one connection.

I can tell you that in my business I can trace, like there are people I have met that I can trace over $100,000 to meeting them because they introduced me to somebody who introduced me to an opportunity. It’s crazy, I can trace six figures to one person I met at one event.

And I’m using numbers because it’s easy to measure, but some of them are the richest relationships you have that would help you go through the hard times in business, that will help you rethink what is possible and what is impossible.

There are people who open doors for you, there are people who they’re just great to be around. There are people that they’re just inspiring, and positive, and encouraging. And when there are hard times you guys can go them through them together. And they’re loyal, right?

Imagine having a friend who’s a real friend. Not somebody who loves you because of what you can do, or who you are. When I say who you are, like your positioning and your title and all of that stuff. But just you. You know what I mean? You can get all of that.

But so hear me, at an event, networking, okay? Networking is not something gifted to a personality type. It’s a skill, right? So if you’re an introvert, like I am, you may still subscribe to what I subscribe to, which is I’m an introvert so I’m not good at networking. Those two things don’t go together, it’s a skill. It’s like saying I’m an introvert so I’m not good at spinal taps. What does that mean? It’s a skill, right? So learn the skill.

And so, network. But I do want to point out something here, when you think about it, we are very safety conscious about certain parts of our lives. So for instance, you may live in a gated community, right? Because you want to wall off certain people. And even if you don’t live in a gated community, you live in a house that has doors, you probably have an alarm system and all of that, that’s to keep certain people out.

When your kids go to play in the neighborhood, you probably don’t let them play with everybody, right? You want to see who is that kid, who is the kid’s parents and all of that kind of stuff, right? On your phone, you probably have a password, code, a pass code, right? Because you don’t want certain people to have access to your phone and all of that.

I want to challenge you in building relationships and building your inner circle, especially as an entrepreneur, you also want to be that security conscious. You don’t just let anybody into your life. And so we had a session in the EntreMD Business School and the way I said it is this, pretend you’re a person who dressed up like to the nines and your outfit was all white. Okay?

Now, the thing about all white outfit means that you’re not going to just sit anywhere, you’re not going to just let anybody hug you. You know, if people come at you and they have a lot of makeup on, you’re probably like, “Let’s shake, let’s not hug.” You know what I mean? And stuff like that. But anyway, you have white on, you’re conscious, right? And so you don’t just let anybody into your world.

Now, there are general friends, right? Like general acquaintances, people you talk to. So of course, you’re not going to be antisocial. But I’m talking about your inner circle because you will be like your relationships. You cannot escape it, cannot.

That’s like me standing under the vent and my air conditioning is set at 65. And I’m going there like, you know, I’m my own person, I’m not going to get cold. Of course you’re going to get cold. Of course you are, right?

And so one of the groups that I want to really point out is people who are complainers, whiners, and blamers. You want to avoid them like the plague because you will become a complainer, whiner, and blamer. It doesn’t matter how positive you are, right? It doesn’t matter.

Imagine going for a conference and there’s this group of people that gather and they’re talking about how horrible the conference is. You think about it, you have two options, you’re going to go like, “Man, I’m a seed, I came here, some parts of it may be horrible or whatever but the worst case scenario, I learn what not to do. But I am walking away from here with an ROI, right?”

Or people who get together gathered, and they’re like, “Oh, this program is a mess.” right? Sometimes you’ll see people do that in Facebook groups and all of that stuff. And you’re like in that group, right? And it’s up to you to, what I do is I steer the conversation. I’m like, “Hey, guys, listen.”

I think this happened recently, someone was complaining about a way somebody sold their program. Like, “Oh, I want the price on the page.” And the person is like, “We don’t put the price on the page, we really want to get on a call for you to determine if this is a good fit.” And the person goes and makes this whole big stink post in the Facebook group and all of that.

And I’m like, “Listen, this is this person’s group, this person’s program, and this person’s way of selling. There is no right or wrong. Some people will tell you the price, some people want to get on a call, make sure it’s a good fit. And if it’s not a good fit, they’ll actually tell you this is not a good fit, we recommend X, Y, Z. And so don’t come in the person’s group and try to create this whole mess because you don’t agree with the way the person is doing it, right?”

So that kind of person, I’m not in a relationship with that person because that rubs off. You know what I’m saying? It rubs off. And so I’m saying people who just complain like, medicine is never going to change. It’s just a wrap, everything sucks, and all of that kind of stuff. While that may be true, well it’s not true because things aren’t going to change.

But what they’re saying may be true, they may be factual. But the thing is, are we going to look on the side of we’re going to come out of this or are we going to look on the side of this is a mess? So I’m saying that to say don’t network and then put yourself in a hole because of it.

So you study the people you’re building relationships with. And don’t bring them into your inner circle, except they’re the people you want to be like, because you will be like your relationships, right? And so I just say that to say the same way you have an alarm system, a security system, the same way you have a passcode on your phone, all of that, put a passcode on your friendships, right, on your inner circle and choose on purpose who’s going to be there, okay?

All right, so that’s networking. And then the fourth thing, the fourth thing is apply the reflection principle. And so what that means is I never leave a conference and I never walk away from a session if I’m in a program without reflecting on what I heard. I’ve done this for a long time.

So I do this while the person is talking. So when they’re talking, I don’t just write what they’re saying, except it’s some quotable quote that I’m like, oh, I need to remember that or whatever, I want to post that on social media or whatever. But I write my reflections and I write my action steps, right?

So I reflect to do. I listen, reflect, do, listen, reflect, do, right? Because think about it, if you went for four events in a year, and every event you walked away with two critical things you were going to change, that’s eight critical things you change. There’s no way your life or your business stays the same.

Imagine if you’re in a group program and you meet every week and every week you make one decision, right? You reflect and make one decision and take one action. Think about the power of that, right?

Because all the things that we talked about, learning the contents, studying the people who are organizing, networking, all of that stuff is at the mercy of our actions, is the mercy of our decisions and our actions. So you reflect what did I learn? What did I think about it? How can I apply it to my own business? All of that kind of stuff. Boom, action time, right?

Action is where the rubber meets the road. That’s where everything changes. This concept that I’ve just talked to you about has created so much transformation, right? When people are like, “You’re a natural speaker,” I’m like, “I’m not. I learned this stuff.” When people are like, my classmates are like, “My goodness, how did you become this person? You’ve changed so much.” This is how.

I do this with events, I do this with programs, I do this with books. I do this with all kinds of things, right? If you will learn to do this, then every event, every program, every book leaves you radically different. Radically different. And if you do this for a year, two years, three years, I mean, I cannot begin to describe how different, like so much better. The things you’ve dreamed of will now be your reality, okay?

So I want you to think about this. I want you to maybe every time you’re going for an event, come back and listen to this. While you’re in a program listen to it again and again. Like you’re in the program, get the content.

Like if you’re in the EntreMD Business School, oh my goodness, study, ask questions like why did you do that? Why did you do that? How did this make a difference? How do you handle stuff like that? Ask questions, you have access, right?

Within your community, within an event, network, build relationships. You are one relationship away from a lot of things that you’re looking for. Just one relationship, one person opening a door, one person making a connection, one person making a referral, one person giving you one idea, they say one thing that changes everything, right?

And then you build that muscle of reflecting and doing, it’s a wrap. It’s a wrap. It’s a wrap.  I’m not saying life is not good now, but it will be so unbelievably good where you start asking yourself, how is this my life? How is this my life? And that’s what I want for you. Okay?

So, apply this, apply this starting today. Come back and listen to this over and over again so you become really good at applying this and watch your life change completely.

Okay, so that’s what I have for you. Please share this episode with another doctor, especially if you guys are going for a conference together or you’re in a program together, and I will see you on the next episode.

Hey, if you love listening to The EntreMD Podcast I want to invite you to join EntreMD On Demand. It is my signature subscription program that gives you access to a library of business courses designed to help you do one thing as a physician entrepreneur, and that is to thrive. Just head out to entremd.com/ondemand and I’d love to have you join us. See you on the inside.